Joerg

Unless they had the need to pay for mercenary services from normal state coffers. Glorantha is built on myth and fallen civilizations. Esrolia was another solar-dominated patriarchalic place before Orlanth freed Ernalda from Harono, and that civilization may have spread beyond just modern Esrolia.

Does that mean we should drop it?

If we are talking tubers, why not something like topinambur (also called Jerusalem artichoke or earth apple)? The plant is from North America, which is generally a good reason to have it in Glorantha. It looks a bit like small sun flowers, possibly reflecting that "seeded by Lodril" better than the poisonous tomato which is grown for its tubers.

These would be luxuries or contractors for citizens and necessities for visitors and non-citizen residents.

The "thieving Vanchites" are focussing on the sneaky aspects of Orlanth Adventurous, possibly contributing one or two of his general feats. Predating the Lightbringers is a given - they formed up only in the closing parts of the Greater Darkness, even though they show up in Orlanthi Storm Age myths from the start. Any of the mammalian totem deities in the Theyalan belt are aspects of the Storm God, whether the boar of the Entruli, the bear of the Sylilings or the ram of those who would become the Vingkotlings. Or the goat god of the Imtherites. "Pre-dating" has a difficult meaning in Godtime anyway. Orlanth has taken over the Storm King role pretty uncontested, with none of his brothers interested in royal authority (although fiercely competitive for the role of the alpha male). The most spectacular squabbles were between VIngkot and the Grizly god whose body makes up Grizly Peak (a place that should be rich in bronze as a consequence), and later on the pigs vs. rams conflict for Arrowmound. The Jajalarings are maybe the least Storm King animal totem in Peloria. Humakt has wolves as allied totemic beasts, which might be another lost storm tribe with his severing from the Storm Tribe.

The Vanchite ancestral totem is the Raccoon, and they are Orlanthi. Of course there would have been a raccoon aspect of the Storm King, just like the bear.

Hon-eel's twins share their shrines with Daylight, the child of the Most Reverend Horse Mother by Golden Bow, a deity revered by them. While the nomads may dislike Hon-eel for her role in the Night of Horrors, her divine children should be part of their pantheon, too.

Given Belintar's Proximate Holy Realm, I would be astonished not to find a Kargan Tor athletics arena in his City of Wonders. Quite a lot of features from the Celestial Court would have been reflected in Belintar's magical architecture, quite probably with contributions from Panaxles and Sestarto.

Orlanth assisted in the "birth" or rebirth of Oslira when he broke the spine of Sshorg(a) with the Dragonspine. Orlanth is mythically dominant or at least present all the way to Jillaro at least, if only in his ursine or coonish incarnation downriver. Whether this midwifing earns him an associate position is a different question. I have seen suggestions that Orlanth taming Oslira is a mythic equivalent of introducing irrigation in the Orlanthi lowlands on the upper Oslir.

I wonder whether shamans with a spirit community rather than a human community would be feasible.

@Nozbat There is Urvantan in the second scenario of The Smoking Ruins, a centennarian or so Rokari sorcerer with spells, runes, techniques etc. well crafted, and also an opponent from a different sect whose abilities don't quite match his spell collection. Sorana from the pregen characters is an example for a part-time Lhankor Mhy sorcery user (in the Core Rules, some other versions don't give her sorcery).

What do you do with the rest of the harvested grain, linen, or cabbages? We have heard about temple and city granaries. Do farmers keep considerable amounts of their harvests in their homes? When the (French) Catholic Church required the shepherds in the Pyrenees to yield every tenth lamb, there was a great upcry and many shepherds fled into Spanish lands or even switched to Catharism (about half a century after the great Cathar crusade, full well realizing the threat of inquisition), according to that excellent litle book Montaillou. Which means your lambs/piglets/calves get tithed again. For herders tending clan-owned or tribal-owned herd beasts, there is an additional draw from the beasts they raise as dividend to the temple(s). But then, most of the regular slaughter will be done by and in the temple anyway, and only the autumnal culling of the herds adjusting for winter fodder may result in more beasts slaughtered than required by temple services. Richer farmers/herders will specialize in providing specific sacrificial beasts for certain services, like fur color requirements (or auspicious beasts for a rite). Providing sacrificial beasts is a form of status achievement, even for a tenant. Each clan (or grouping of temples) seems to need its own initiate of Waha. That makes home slaughtering a bit problematic, unless Barntar or Ernalda offer the Peaceful Cut, too.

Dara Happa has had gladiatoral games ever since Emperor Elmexdros, with blood (not necessarily lives) shed for the glory of the emperor and his war gods.

If Delecti or his Dancers in Darkness were Vivamorti vampires, where is their cult of living minions?

The Bronze Age distribution of spoils goes: The party leader presents all spoils from a mission to the quest giver, who then gives a "generous" reward to the party as a whole, or to individual party members in recognition of feats. As such, the 18k L artifact already is in the hands of the quest-giver, and maybe the leader, who then has to think hard about his Orlanthi virtues.

Rather than just fickle, I would present him with different personalities that may surface according to circumstances. We know two of these personalities - the Wind Lord Garrath Sharpsword, and the Orlanth holy person Argrath Dragonspear, from earlier publications. White Bull may be another character, and he may be possessed by aspects of Arkat. Usually, he will be filtered and framed by some of his companions who may pull him into one of the known personas. (With Elusu present, you shouldn't rely on that.)

According to Jar-eel's "did they achieve liberation?", Verithurusa was one of the conspirators, alongside Tolat/Shargash and the Bat. The Blue Moon (naturally) is not depicted. Makes you wonder who took the Orlanth role in the cabal that "liberated" Argenteus. Beatpot as King West Wind?

Old Chaos: Primal Chaos, Krarsht, Jotimam Outer Chaos: Kajabor, Krjalk, Pocharngo Chaos Volunteers: Ragnaglar, Thed, Mallia, Sedenya Chaos bred: Wakboth, Dogsalu Born from Chaos deities Tien, Cacodemon, Cwim Chaos corrupted: Vivamort, Bagog

I would expect that Gonn Orta's last full meal was part of his wooing the giantess whose baby we meet on the 1621 Cradle. Argrath bringing the wine may have been part of that - the Agitorani needed to drink before reproduction, too.

The Guide assigns the Chaos rune to only a few cults, with Gark being absent from the listing in the Chaos pantheon on p.153. In the Lunar pantheon, there are Sedenya (the Red Goddess) and Nysalor (p.151f). The list of the Chaos pantheon on p. 153(which is stated to be incomplete) includes Bagog, Cacodemon, Gbaji, Ikadz, Krarsht, Mallia, Ompalam, Pocharngo, Seseine, Thed and Vivamort. Gark is listed in the Chaos appendix (p.702), but no runes are given, and again on p.706, both in its own paragraph and named as a Chaos god under the heading of "Other Chaos Gods", again without any runes given. The entire final part of the appendix is presented as a Boristi in-world document, and lacks information about Vithelan chaos deities or the god-like giant chaos horrors like Cwim or the Mother of Monsters. The Prosopaedia does give the Chaos rune to Gark and most of the usual suspects. I collected the complete list of deities with runes as an index to Prosopaedia in the Download section in pdf-format. Quite a few deities don't have runes assigned - the Chaos list lacks Kajabor and Jraktal the Tap, for instance. Quite a few deities have different runes than in other publications (such as RQ3 Gods of Glorantha, Cult Compendium, HeroQuest, or the Guide). Previous pubications have been rather loose with their associations with the chaos pantheon. Nontraya and Brangbane are discussed in the section about Unlife in the Guide under the heading "Other Chaos Gods", a section that ends with Zorak Zoran as one source of undead. The Guide remains silent about Gloomshark or the source of the Kralori zombie rowers. Does the imperial navy trade with Huan-to or Zorak Zorani from up north, or do they have other sources for these rowers? RQ3 had a spirit magic ritual to create zombies, apparently for shamans. In the story of Vadel's encounter with a powerful Pamaltelan shaman in Revealed Mythologies, several of the Vadeli explorers are turned into zombies by the encounter, their souls or spirits ripped out but the bodies remaining ambulant. Non-Gloranhan RQ3 offered a variety of other undead - mummies, draugr, and other mythical creatures using the "no POW, but MP" guideline.

Yes. There are a couple of conventions set by the design of RQG combat that I would have preferred in a different way. Introducing house rules may change the game in unexpected ways. One thing I experienced in mock combat was a non-physical pushback of an opponent (in a rubber sword duel) just by intimidation. (It may have helped that there is a lot of me, vertically.) Imagine a battle situation with your Humakti on point and all attackers going for the flanks rather than the point man, leaving the Humakti without an immediate opponent. Not a fix, more of a want - something to enable a modicum of movement inside the Strike Ranks in a melee situation. Admittedly more based on armchair research and limited rubber sword experiences than actual martial arts training or real life combat situations.

We seem to be mainly in agreement. I was thinking about a submission to the Miscatonic Repository with lifepath events that create both some skill boosts and a list of hooks directly for the GM to lean into, but that has to be for Seventh Edition, which I neither know nor own. (Which can of course be remedied with a little money and some time.) When every outing results in the face-off with horror from beyond the world and from beyond reason, even with Sanity attrition it becomes the usual fare. When you offer other problems which might be as existential for the characters (as e.g. the Police catching up with the drastic solutions you used to prevent the apocalypse one or two adventures ago), the next Mythos encounter may be a surprise again. One of the most fascinating Mythos-adjacent offerings of the last few years, Matt Ruff's Lovecraft Country, manages to make the Lovecraftian bits of horror pale towards the description of everyday horror for people on the receiving end of Jim Crow laws. True. The setting research for CoC usually is quite well done and can serve for normal Film Noir or investigation games. When I started my personal dive into fantasy literature in the early eighties, possibly half of the books on the market were Arthurian or pastiches thereof, with the popularity of "The Mists of Avalon" pulling in lame imitations. Mainly because I should focus on getting anywhere with those Glorantha projects that have plenty stuff written or outlined already. That's not at all what I meant with "troupe play". I encountered the concept first in Ars Magica, where every player was encouraged to create both a Magician character and a companion character (with skills to deal with the mundane world), and for each adventure the player would choose which of the characters they would play. The other characters would continue their usual activities at or around the home base off-screen. Character attrition in an action scene won't be replaced immediately - this is not Paranoia where the replacement clone gets shuttled to the smoking boots of the predecessor within minutes. Introducing a replacement character either means there is someone on standby to slip into this role (say someone sitting in the escape vehicle waiting for the party to flee from their current location), or you need a lull away from action to regroup and introduce the replacement from the pool. The idea was to let the player characters have shared a number of their lifepath experiences with some of the replacement characters. Surviving in a collapsed bunker in the trench wars in northern France, escaping a shipwreck, finishing a period of education together, being subject to a razzia in a speakeasy (to choose some 1920ies background opportunities) - stuff like that. Ideally also shared with some of the other players' characters so that there already is some common ground between the characters when they enter the scenario. Realistically, writing something for the Miscatonic Repository probably will find the bigger audience than a generic self-published BRP ORC license offering, if only through the cross-promotion on Drivethru. RQG uses the same concept (in the core rules - the Starter Set has no character creation at all, except for a quick and dirty character tool on the RQ Wiki). I have seen people bring in replacement grandparents or parents when the first candidates meet an exceedingly early and possibly meaningless demise. The Char-gen I am envisioning will also protocol these background events as plot hooks for the GM, ideally nicely lined up so that the GM can create NPCs or complications that echo such past experience. Old grudges, possibly a vendetta, unpaid debts (financial or moral)... or thwarted or faile relationships returning as an option. Not all previous investigators need to go completely gaga when they get retired, especially when there is an option to carry over some of the accumulated experience to the replacement character as they use the retiring character's exploits as their most recent background results. Putting this into a form that is flexible and makes use of a campaign log or similar will be a bit of a design challenge. Something like that, too. If a young researcher perishes in a scenario, the academic mentor could also be the replacement character, or possibly a retired military instructor. Sandy Petersen keeps raving about using ghost stories etc. as Call of Cthulhu scenarios. And you can incur sanity loss from non-Mythos traumatic experiences - surviving the trench wars of WW1 caused plenty PTSD (or shell-shock, as it was called back then), and prohibition era gang wars could be very nasty, too. Ideally one would provide a lifepath engine that can be completed with events or tropes native to the setting. One thing that doesn't change much between settings is the development of humans - encountering temporary significant others, gaining or refusing academic or work or criminal experience, serving in the war(s) or similar events (subsequent occupation, colonial endeavors...). Earlier in the thread I mentioned Jennell Jacquays' Central Casting books as one such product. These lack the "parental" approach of RQG or KAP, and the group dynamic-building introduction of shared experiences in the backstories of characters (both one's own character pool and other players' characters). I'll have to play around with these ideas a bit.

The Avalon Hill deal was made before there was a Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay (all there was at the time was the skirmish game Warhammer Fantasy Battle). The GW RQ3 license may have overlapped with WH FRP. The case made it into Wikipedia. This was before the Mongoose license. Eldarad wasn't bad and had a few useful ideas, but people already had a RQ city next to a ruin field that was very much alive. Daughters of Darkness was neither original nor very useful, except in its inflammatory service as centerpiece of community building at conventions. The Mongoose era was built on an interesting idea but created in undue haste and as a result near complete absence of quality control and not enough research of the available sources. Since the license fees were late and/or short, Greg was pretty exasperated at the deal, and the current Chaosium crew as well. Some products contained bits of material provided by Greg, like the Jrustela book(s) or the Clanking City, but the only product that had any interaction with Greg was Dara Happa Stirs, probably the best of the whole endeavor. I was talking about the fact that almost all the published gameable material for RQ concentraded on the Zola Fel Valley, with only Griffin Mountain, Troll Pak and Dorastor and the two early scenarios Apple Lane and Snake Pipe Hollow offering something outside of that region. I like the city of Pavis and the Big Rubble, but since my first experience of gaming in Glorantha was the Dragon Pass boardgame, I wanted to play in urban Sartar or the Lunar Empire. RQ3 Gods of Glorantha and the RQ3 Genertela Box (and the RQ3 Bestiary) offered some background information beyond that, as had the Holy Country article in RQ2 Companion, but no campaign material followed. (I did end up playing my first Glorantha campaign in the Holy Country.)

Thanks to @David Scott for pointing to the official guidelines. TLDR: I am blathering about how we players and GMs may relate to the difference the Bronze Age-ish setting works, and how to make these activities relate to our real world experience. In my Glorantha, the clan (and its earth and storm cult, and above it the tribe and the city confederation) have a direct involvement in the agricultural primary production (grain, cash crops like linen or apples, dairy, meat), and the harvest is a collective effort under the auspices of the local temples and officials. Apportioning the hides and recognizing the surplus beyond returning the seed stock (which will have come from the clan granary) as "individual" hide manager effort is the tricky bit to decide what is household income. What is a household in Sartar? RQG makes it look like the adventurer's activities decide over the financial fate of the extended family they belong to in the name of player agency. Sure, the player gets to make the end-of-year rolls depending on the player character skills, the rules offer a result for annual income and the consequences of not having met the requirements. Wealth generated from non-adventuring activities seems to be seen as contraproductive to game enjoyment. In actual play, material adventure rewards can (and occasionally do) outdo annual income rewards by a magnitude or two. At the same time, annual household income from a single hide is in no way sufficient to afford a season of training or a new point of spirit magic once every two years for a single character, and there may be more than one player character to a single household. The designers seem to believe in an austere scarcity regime when it comes to means available to develop a character by anything other than adventure rewards. The question then is how to tax adventure rewards. And that is where playing in a Bronze Age-ish setting hits us with a series of hammers. If you play a "culturally correct" game, the designated leader during an adventure gets to decide the distribution of all rewards accumulated in the course of the adventure. Regardless who overcame that foe or who might want to claim dibs on a find, Bronze Age culture puts all the rewards in the hands of the designated leader, who in turn is obliged to bring all of this before the quest giver. Typically, the quest giver is an official of one of these tax-taking institutions - in the GM Screen adventure book, the quest giver is ultimately Queen Kallyr or one of her officials, in the Starter Set, the adventurers are brought before the City Rex or his officials and get their quest from them. In theory, one of the adventurers becomes the quest leader responsible to present all the spoils of the endeavor (minus consumables used up in the fulfilment of the quest) to the quest giver, who takes it and then doles out rewards to the party leader and possibly individuals with special achievement. The party leader distributes the rewards to the party according to rules of leadership similar to the shares distributed by a pirate crew, typically receiving a double individual share and a bad time reserve share he (or a temple) keeps for maintenance or weregeld payments, and the other party members receive their share. If this process means that the party has given the entire amount of the loot to the quest giver, then the amount the quest giver returns to the party leader and possibly individual party members would be "taxes paid" but not individual cult tithes paid. But then, equipment upgrades aren't exactly taxable, while ostentation upgrades (i.e. material wealth that can be traded or just presented to underline one's status) might be. A player adventurer receiving something as reward from their own cult would not be tithed for that boon. Receiving a reward from a different cult or a different leader might make the leaders in their cult or clan listen up for their organisation's share in that, and at least build up an expectation to receive something which may affect their generosity when dealing out stuff from their coffers in the annual distribution of economic assets. That's because "property" is mainly owned by the institutions, not individuals. The household is such an institution, with property assigned to it by the clan and/or temples, which in turn may have been assigned property by superior temples or by the tribe, or the city confederation, or the confederation, in all cases through the leaders of those institutions or officials acting in their name. I guess hardly any game follows this culturally correct procedure. Practically all us players and GMs are part of a capitalist society that recognizes individual property and institutional property in the capitalist sense, and few of us will have any practical experience with taking adventure missions (although some of us may have experienced taking on military missions or development or investigative contracts). Few of us will be familiar with collectively owned assets or collective income outside of the tax revenue of (usually emotionally distant) institutions. Perhaps the closest to the adventuring activity of our player characters is service in volunteer militias (like e.g. volunteer fire brigades in rural areas, or technical aid services in disaster relief like provided by the German THW or some cases of National Guard mobilisations), or reservists recalled to active miltary duty. Or maybe volunteer participation in archaeologocial digs. When framed in such terms, the quests aren't expected to finance our lives. We might get a tax-deductible or in rare occasion a tax-exemted material reward for our participation. We might get an advanced rank in such volunteer organisations or in our professional careers from such activities, but we might also see our professional careers falter or be damaged by such extracurricular activity. Our expectation of spoils of adventures has been built by fiction or more approachable historical approaches to looting, like e.g. Henry Morgan's codex for his pirates (which may have been a fiction in his time, too) applied to our real life understanding of modern personal property. We might live in a system that demands property tax from us - more often indirectly unless we are registered as land owners or drive a car, or run a business which has such taxable property. We are used to income tax and social security payments, and taxes on windfalls like inheritance or significant gambling or lottery wins (when run by registered organizers who need to deduct taxes). Tithing a religious organisation may be familiar to a subset of us, but usually on a much lesser scale, and voluntarily or (over here in Germany) as a small percentage on top of our regular tax payments forwarded to our state-registered creed that has delegated tithe collection to the state. We don't expect to tithe our new car or our new house, or the new roof to our house, to the church. We are rather used to claiming tax deductions from our usual drain of income when doing such investments. Few players would understand their property as that of their household, possibly on loan from their local or national government. "Mine" is what we are used to thinking, rarely "ours", with the "us" rather narrowly defined and rarely extending to non-core family communities. Sure, our local church or club may own a property, which we as members have a certain feeling of "ownership", but that is different from the ownership e.g. for the clothes we wear, unless it is a uniform or security gear provided by our employer required for our work for that employer. We may be used to regard military (or otherwise security) service weapons as property of the employer, but we may also own our personal weapons (for hunting or sports). Few of us are working in primary production any more (farming, herding, fishing, professional hunting, subsistence farming or gathering)., but many may have a garden on the side or collect mushrooms or berries in the commons during the right seasons, or fish or hunt not just for trophies but for the frying pan on the side. We don't expect to pay taxes for these non-commercial activities even if they may relieve our budgets somewhat, and neither will Gloranthan societies (other than sharing your spoils of such activities with your households when you are in the situation to bring them home). Note that the Gloranthan conception of household usually extends way beyond the notion of flatmate or core family. Perhaps the face-to-face gaming session, maybe with a collective barbecue and the pooling of game snacks and drinks, is the best real life approximation for in-game economy.